Text of video part 1.
[0:00] Hello, my name is Ron Liebermann. I am the president of Signtel and will introduce to you today the Signtel Interpreter and it's various functions. A couple of words to preface the presentation. I would like to tell you that the Signtel Interpreter was developed with a rather large team. We had engineers, hardware engineers, image processing engineers, software engineers, linguists, sign language interpreters, sign language instructors and the most importantly our deaf employees. Actually, we had over 100 deaf employees that were dedicated to the development of the Signtel interpreter. If my memory is correct we had actually 132 deaf employees dedicated to this development, some of them were also deaf and blind and they were coming from different locations in the country, which is important because there are various dialects of signing and a sign that is interpreted in one form in one region of the country in a different region you need a different sign. The deaf employees were put in focus groups and discussed what and how should be signed and so on. I can tell you that some of the debates were heated debates but at the end, not only did the majority rule but an agreement was arrived as to what sign to used and how to use it. The dictionary of the Signtel Interpreter is an ASL dictionary, then we put the images together for a sentence and you will see them in seamless form. You will not realize that they are independent images. The signer is our sign language interpreter Maureen who will also mouth the words, which means that the Signtel interpreter is also good for those who read lips. Those who read lips also utilize text for assistance and therefore the text will appear at the widow for the text while she is mouthing the words and signing at the same time, so it will be good for everybody. On top of that, because it was developed with deaf employees from all over the country reaching a consensus, this product is good for a nationwide usage for people who are deaf, for people who are hearing and want to communicate with the deaf and so on. I will now move to demonstrate the various functions of the Signtel interpreter. [2:53] [2:54] The Signtel Interpreter is composed of three windows: the video box, the text box just box just below it, which right now is blank and will have some text in it in a moment when we utilize it, and on the right the dictionary box. The dictionary box has various words, numbers and letters and if you want to know the signing of any one of them, it’s sufficient to click twice [clicks twice on “kiss” and she signs “kiss”] and you have it in signing. [3:29] Notice that between the video box [pointing to the video box] and the text box is also a series of buttons that I will explain in a moment and show to you. Before I do that, I would like to address a feature that the Signtel Interpreter has, which is a drag and drop. You can create a document, drag it and drop it into the Signtel Interpreter – for example, I am dragging and dropping here a document [showing the dragging and dropping of the sentence “hello how are you”]. I can also take material that was signed and drag it and drop it onto the desktop so that later I can revisit it and see it in sign language. [4:11] Going now to the panel with the keys. Here you have in the center a “Play” key [I point to the key] – I am going to click on it [The sentence “hello how are you” appears in the text box, signed and heard as well]. [4:29] As you noticed, words that are being signed appear in green color. On the right, I can go and click here [shows clicking the arrow on the upper right hand side of the panel] and get it positioned all the way to the right [the word “you” appears in green] and have it sign only one word, as we can see now it’s green. I can go and position it all the way to the left [the word “hello” appears now in green] – as you can see it is now in green, ready to be signed, [she signs the word “hello” and then completes to sign the whole sentence] or I can go somewhere in the middle [points to the appropriate button] [showing the word “are” now in green] and show any word I can sign for any reason I want. [5:23] The panel also has, as you can see, the minus and plus buttons. Those are very important. You can position the signing at any speed that you want, between 25% to 300%. If we take what Maureen has signed right now [she signs “hello how are you”] and we go down in speed, we can see it at 50% [shows reducing speed by hitting the minus button and she signs slowly “hello how are you”]; and if you want to go even further down, you can go to 25% [further hitting the minus button to 25% and she signs very slowly “hello how are you], which is very useful if somebody is trying to learn sign language. [6:29] I will go now, increase the speed to 125 [shows hitting the plus key to increase to 125, then hit the “play” key an she signs faster “hello how are you]; and those of you who are much faster signers, we are going to increase it all the way to 300% [shows hitting the “plus” button up to 300 and then hit the “play” button]. Notice the speed [she signs very fast “hello how are you”]. [7:05] If you noticed, not only does she sign very fast, but the voice comes at a lower speed. It comes at a speed that enables you to hear and understand. Those of you that would like to have a faster voice, that can be done too, when you go to the tool box, right here on the left [shows the tool box at the upper left side of the panel, clicks on it and the window with the tool box appear], we are able to make changes necessary and desire and create a voice at a different speed. I will discuss the toolbox later on. [7:41] [7:41] Right now we will proceed. As you noticed, the word “are” was signed. However, in conformity with ASL, words like “are”, “to”, “the” are not signed. Signtel Interpreter enables you to go and eliminate the signing of those words. I am going to go to the toolbox, clicking on it [shows the tool box and clicking on the “Sign auxiliaries”] and as you can see the Sign Auxiliaries are taken out and at this point all such words would not be signed anymore. Let’s see…[she signs “how you”}. As you noticed, the word “are” was not signed anymore. [8:29] The Signtel Interpreter has various linguistic capabilities, which I will demonstrate now. Let me drag and drop a simple word, the word “mark”[dragging and dropping the word “mark”]. As you notice, it is highlighted and is slanted. The reason is, that the word “mark” has multiple meanings. Multiple meanings that we as hearing people can discern easily, but in sign language, each of the meaning has a different sign. So, I am going to the word, right click and see that it can mean either mark, make a note of something, or spot something and school grade or target and I can make the changes. Let’s see – if I just let it stay the way it is [she signs “mark”]. OK, let me now right click on it and choose “stain” instead. What do I get? [she signs “stain”]. As you can see, multiple meanings are taken care of as well. [9:47] Sometimes, multiple meanings may also involve technical terms. For example, let me drag and drop the word “mouse” and…[she signs “mouse”]… this is of course the mouse of the computer. [10:17] Let me take a sentence: “cool as a cucumber”. This is an idiom. Idioms are mostly unknown in the deaf community. We need to make sure that when this is translated to sign language, we do not show cucumbers. Well, what do we have? [she signs “calm”] you can hear in voice the idiom – the sign shows the meaning. [again, she signs “calm”, while the voice says “cool as a cucumber”]. [10:52] OK, let us go to something else. As an example we’ll use “beat around the bush”. Again, we will hear it in voice, but the sign will be the correct one. [she signs “avoid”] and she sings “avoid”.The Signtel Interpreter handles some 1400 idioms, more than enough. [11:17] Let me bring something else into the screen and you can see now that I am talking about two people. One is Mr. Stone and one is Mr. Brown. But the reason it’s here is because a stone can be a name, a house made of stone. Brown can be a name, it also can be a color. Signtel Interpreter knows to distinguish between such elements. Let’s take a look. In other words, once she signs, a name will me finger spelled as is appropriate and when it is not a name, will carry it’s sign. Here we go [she fingerspells Mr. Stone then signs “lives in stone house” and” then fingerspells Mr. Brown and signs “lives in brown (color) house”].OK. Let’s move on and see additional features of the Signtel Interpreter. [12:23] Numbers are important. A number can be a numeric number, could be time, could be money, or could be a date. The Signtel Interpreter knows to distinguish among all those and sign them correctly. For example, two dollars twenty five cents [she signs “$2.25”]. Right here…and if we need larger numbers, they are there as well of course [$500 is dragged and dropped into the text box of the Signtel Interpreter] [She signs “$500”], and if you want even a larger number [$1,000,000 is dragged and dropped into the text box] here we have it [she signs “$1,000,000”]. And a combination of a very large number [$5,300,250 is dragged and dropped onto the text box] and [she signs “$5,300,250”]. [13:41] Let us move now to dates. [“June 29, 2009 and 6/28/01 and June 28th, 2002 and July 4, 1999" is gragged and dropped into the text box]. As you can see, “June” appears as word in one case, following by a digit for 6, then 28th rather than just a digit. Let’s see what happens here [she signs correctly in all cases the same appropriate date]. [14:28] So we see that the Signtel Interpreter is capable of discerning the right information and sign it correctly. Let us proceed. Yes, I want also to show you time, so [“12:00 p.m or 8:32 a.m” are dragged and dropped into the text box] here you have time as well. [she signs “12:00 PM or 8:32 AM”]. OK…[14:59] - end of Part 1 Click here for text only version part 2 Back to Video Demo |